Soon I will become an elephant.
My ears will grow and begin to droop.
They will turn grey and floppy.

in the kitchen after cutting
she tapes muslin to the paneglass
sliding door with the northern exposure

His method is published in a pamphlet.
Turning pages so quickly he resembles
some complicated threshing machine,

I have a partridge egg,
a gift from a man
who found it in some field straw

Even in Rembrandt’s portraits,
they don’t look like a ruling class,
and their wives are no less pronounced, prizing money not blood, merit

It’s true
I wanted silence
longed for it but

We are ten minutes late. They
are very sweet, hiding their
rage under pink sugar, a boiled

I take meticulous care in noticing the ground
under my feet
as i walk slowly

Something hopeful is about to happen,
the shepherd informed. The last train

out of town toots in the background.

The raison d’etre of much
Aestheticism, as of
the entire hermetic tradition